The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Al stared at the screen, which had frozen on the last image of the spacesuited guy stepping into Mindori’s airlock. “All right, so we’ve got two separate things going on here. Kiera hits Bernhard, and a hellhawk helps someone steal our electrical stuff. The first one I can understand. But the hellhawk … Can you figure what it’s doing?”

  “No. But it’s back here right now. We can just ask it straight out. Mindori docked on the ledge this morning. Kiera’s got her engineering teams out there fitting it ready for a long-duration flight. Something else to consider: our defence network says another hellhawk has gone missing from its patrol. They’re running a check on the rest to see how many are still there.”

  Al leaned back into the chair, and grinned happily. “They could be trying to break free. How long till that food factory they need is fixed?”

  “Another week. Five days if we really hustle.”

  “Then hustle, Emmet. Meantime I’m going out to take a ride in Cameron. He can talk to the other hellhawks for me, without Kiera listening in.”

  Gerald’s fractured thoughts slithered through a universe of darkness and pain. He didn’t know where he was, what he was doing. He didn’t really care. Flashes erupted from time to time as neurons made erratic connections, releasing bright images of Marie. His thoughts clustered round them like worshipful congregations. The reason for such adulation was slipping from him.

  Voices began to impinge on his miserable existence. A chorus of whispers. Insistent. Relentless. Growing louder, stronger. They began to intrude on his vague consciousness.

  A blast of white-hot pain put him in sudden, frightening contact with his body again.

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  The pain changed position and texture. Burning.

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  There was sound. Real sound, rattling through the air. His own thin screams. And laughter. Cruel cruel laughter.

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  No, he told them. No, I won’t. Not again. I’d rather die.

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  I’ll die for Marie. Rather that …

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  She said … She said she’d … Oh no. Not that. Don’t make me, not with her. No.

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  Astonishment at the soul’s identity crumbled his mental barriers. The soul roared through from the beyond, permeating his body; the energy it brought seething along his limbs, sparkling down his spinal column.

  Invigorating. New memories invaded his synapses, colliding with the emplaced recollections in cascades of sights, sounds, tastes, and sensation. It wasn’t like before. Before, he’d been confined, shoved down to the very edge of awareness, knowing of the outside by the tiniest trickle of nerve impulses. A passive, near-insensate passenger/prisoner in his own body. This time it was a more equal partnership, though the newcomer was dominant.

  Gerald’s eyes opened, a flush of energistic power helping them to focus.

  Another application finally banished the terrible headache that had raged for so long.

  Two of Kiera’s bodyguards were smirking down at him. “Who’s a lucky boy then,” one chortled. “Man, you are in for the shag of a lifetime tonight.”

  Gerald raised a hand. Two searing spears of white fire flashed from his fingertips, drilling straight through the craniums of both bodyguards.

  Four souls gibbered their fury as they plunged back into the beyond.

  “I have other plans for this evening, thank you,” said Loren Skibbow.

  It had been a while since Al took a ride in his rocketship. Sitting in the fat green-leather couch on the hellhawk’s promenade deck made him realize just how long. He stretched out, putting his feet up.

  “Where can I take you, Al?” Cameron’s voice asked from the silver tannoy grill on the wall.

  “Just off Monterey, you know.” He needed a break, just a short time alone to get his head around what was happening. In the old days he would have just gone for a drive, maybe take a fishing rod with him. Golf, too, he’d played golf a few times; though not to any rules the Royal and Ancient had ever heard about. Just buddies fooling round on a fine day.

  The view through the big forward window showed him the asteroid’s counter-rotating spaceport slipping away overhead as they leapt off the docking ledge. Gravity inside the cabin was rock steady. New California tracked in from the riveted steel rim around the window, a silvery half crescent, like the moon had looked on clear summer nights above Brooklyn.

  He never could get used to how much cloud planets had. It was amazing anyone on the surface ever saw the sun.

  Cameron was curving out from the big asteroid, rolling continually like a playful dolphin. If Al looked back through the portholes down the side of the promenade deck, he could see brilliant sunlight sweeping over the yellow fins and scarlet fuselage.

  “Hey, Cameron, can you show me the Orion Nebula?”

  The hellhawk’s antics slowed. Its nose swung across the starscape, hunting like a compass needle. “There we go. Should be dead centre in the window now.”

  Al saw it then, a delicate haze of light, like God had wet his thumb and smeared a star across the canvas of space. He sat back in the couch and drank cappuccino from a tiny cup as he looked at it. Weird little thing.

  A fog in space, Emmet said. Where stars are born. The Martians and their death rays lived on the other side.

  There was no way he could get his head round that. The idea of the Navy ships going there had frightened Kiera, and even Jez was concerned. But it didn’t connect for him. He was going to have to ask for advice again.

  He sighed, acknowledging the inevitable. But there were some things he could still take care of by himself. Chicago had more territories, factions and gangs than the whole Confederation put together. He knew how to manipulate them. Make new friends, lose old ones. Apply some heat.

  Bribe, blackmail, extort. Nobody today, living or dead, had his kind of political experience. Prince of the city. Then, now, and always.

  “Cameron, I want to talk to a hellhawk called Mindori, and I want it confidential.”

  The sharply pointed scarlet nose began to turn, sending the nebula sliding from view. Monterey reappeared, a grubby ochre splodge with pinpricks of light shimmering around its spaceport.

  “The guy’s name is Rocio, Al,” Cameron said.

  A square in the corner of the window turned grey, then swirled into a face. “Mr. Capone,” Rocio said politely. “I’m honoured. What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t like Kiera,” Al told him.

  “Who does? But we’re both stuck with her.”

  “You’re hurting me, Rocio. You know that’s bullshit. She’s got you by the short and curlies because she blew up all your food factories. What if I told you I might be able to rebuild one?”

  “Okay, I’m interested.”

  “I know you are. You’re trying to set one up yourself. That’s why you grabbed those electric gadgets the other day, right?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We got it all on film, Rocio; your guys breaking in to Monterey and driving a truckload of stuff back to you.”

  “I was docked for a routine maintenance overhaul, some replacement components were fitted, so what?”

  “Want me to check on that with Kiera?”

  “I thought you didn’t like her.”

  “I don’t, that’s why I came to you first.”

  “What do you want, Mr. Capone?”

  “Two things. If your factory doesn’t work out, come and talk to me, okay? We can arrange much better terms
than Kiera’s giving you. No rumbles, for a start. You hellhawks just keep a look out for us around New California. That long-range sight of yours is a valuable commodity. I respect that, and I’m prepared to pay you the top-dollar price for it.”

  “I’ll consider the offer. What’s the other thing?”

  “I want to talk to the guy who saw the murder. That was a good friend of mine got whacked. I got some questions about it for your guy.”

  “Not in person. He’s useful to me, I don’t want him taken away.”

  “Hell no. I know he ain’t a possessed. I just wanna talk, is all.”

  “Very well.”

  Al sat drinking the rest of his coffee for a minute, trying to display patience. When Jed’s sullen suspicious face finally appeared he laughed softly. “I’ll be goddamned. How old are you, kid?”

  “What do you care?”

  “I’m impressed, that’s why. You got balls, I’ll say that for you, kid. Waltzing straight into my headquarters and stinging me for a hundred grand’s worth of electrical garbage. That’s the kind of style I like. Ain’t many in this universe would have done that.”

  “Didn’t have any choice,” Jed grunted.

  “Hell, I know that. I grew up in a tough neighbourhood myself. I know how it works when you’re on the bottom of the pile. You gotta show the boss you can take the heat, right? If you can’t take it, you ain’t no use to him. You get kicked out, because there’s always some other wiseass who thinks he can do better.”

  “Are you really Al Capone?”

  Al ran his hands down his jacket lapel. “Check out the threads, sonny. Nobody else got my class.”

  “So what do you want to talk to me for?”

  “I need to know things. Now, I can’t offer you much in return. I mean, you ain’t too keen to come visit me in person. I can appreciate that, so I can’t give you no reward; dames, booze, that kind of thing. What I got plenty of is local currency. You heard about that?”

  “Some kind of tokens?”

  “Yeah. Tokens, backed up by my word. If I say you owe somebody something, then you have to pay. So I’ll owe you three favours. Me, Al Capone, I will personally go into debt to you. That’s bankable on any possessed planet. Now you can’t ask for stuff like world peace, or crap like that.

  But any service or help you need, it’s yours. Think of it as the ultimate insurance. I mean, us possessed, we’re spreading through this universe.

  So, you game?”

  It wasn’t a smile, but the sullen scowl had gone. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

  “First off, that other guy with you, the one you left behind. Is he here to kill me?”

  “Gerald? Christ, no. He’s ill, real bad.” Jed brightened. “Hey, that’s my first favour. His name is Gerald Skibbow, and if you find him, I want you to bung him in a proper hospital with real doctors and stuff.”

  “Okay. This is more like it, we got a dialogue here, you and me. Okay, Gerald Skibbow. If we find him, he gets good medical care. Now the other thing is, I want to know if you saw anyone else hanging around in that corridor when you found the corpse.”

  “There was one bloke, yeah. I saw him through the glass in the door. Didn’t see much of him. Got a long nose. Oh, and really thick eyebrows. You know, the kind that meet over your nose.”

  “Luigi,” Al growled. I should have known he’d side with Kiera.

  Disciplining people always sparks off a shitload of resentment. He’s going to have contacts among the fleet officers, too, a lot of contacts.

  She’ll love that. “Thanks kid, I still owe you a couple of favours.”

  Jed gave an exaggerated nod. “Right.” His image faded out.

  Al let out an infuriated breath. Partly angry at himself. He should have kept an eye on Luigi. It was this whole return setup. You couldn’t have a wiseguy whacked no more, because there was a good chance he’d come back somewhere on New California, and madder at you than when the beef started.

  A wave of surprise and consternation flowed through the souls in the beyond, for once drawing Al’s attention. Something momentous was happening. Terror and awe at the event were the dominant sensations spiralling off from the relayed impression.

  “What?” Al asked them. “What is it?”

  Nothing like that first agonising blow against Mortonridge, thank Christ.

  When he concentrated on the slippery grey images fluttering from soul to soul he saw a sun with another sun erupting out of it. Space was filled with flame, and death flooded inexorably across the sky like a stormfront.

  Arnstadt!

  “Holy Christ,” Al gasped. “Cameron? You seeing this?”

  “Loud and clear. I think the hellhawks swallowed out.”

  “Don’t blame them.” Organization warships were vanishing inside blossoming shells of dazzling white light.

  The Confederation Navy had answered Trafalgar in a way he had never dreamed they would. Brute force on an irresistible level. His warships were helpless. Their precious antimatter useless. “Don’t they understand?” he asked the desperate souls. “Arnstadt will go.”

  Already flashes of joy were cutting through the beyond as a multitude of bodies were proffered for possession. The reality dysfunction around Arnstadt began to strengthen as more and more possessed added themselves to its gestalt. With the Organization’s orbital weapons falling to earth in a rain of smoke there was nothing left to prevent them.

  “Cameron, get me home. Fast.”

  He knew what would happen. The Confederation Navy would visit New California next, its imminent arrival presenting Kiera with her main chance. This time the lieutenants and soldiers would most likely listen when she told them they should return to the planet.

  A bad day getting worse.

  The hostage families of the starship crew members were held on several floors of a hotel overlooking Monterey’s biosphere. During the day, they gathered together in the building’s lounges and public areas to provide each other with whatever mutual comfort they could muster. It wasn’t much. They had become a weary crowd surviving each day on shattered nerves: barely fed, denied information, ignored and despised in equal measure by their Organization guards.

  Silvano and the two gangsters ushered Kingsley into the hotel’s conference suite. He saw Clarissa immediately, helping serve the morning meal. She caught sight of him and cried out, dropping her serving spatula into the pan of beans. Everybody watched as they embraced.

  She was overjoyed to see him. For the first minute. Then Kingsley could stand the dishonesty no longer, and confessed what he had become. She stiffened, backing away in anguish. Wanting to block out the words, for them never to have been spoken.

  “How did it happen?” she asked. “How did you die?”

  “I was in a starship. There was an antimatter explosion.”

  “Trafalgar?” she whispered. “Was it Trafalgar, Kingsley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh dear God. Not you. Not that.”

  “I have to know something. I’m sorry I’m not asking about you—I should be, I guess—but this is the most important thing in the universe right now. Do you know where Webster is?”

  She shook her head. “They keep us apart. He was assigned to the kitchen staff by that fat collaborator bastard Octavius. I used to see him every week. But it’s been over a fortnight since they brought him last. None of them will tell me anything.” She broke off at the strange smile rising on Kingsley’s face. “What is it?”

  “He was telling the truth.”

  “Who?”

  “I was told that Webster had gotten away from the Organization, that he was on a starship. Now you tell me you haven’t seen him, and Capone can’t find him.”

  “He’s free?” The knowledge overcame her reluctance, and she reached out to touch him again.

  “It looks that way.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I don’t know. Someone very strange. Clarissa, believe me, there’s a lot more going
on in this universe than we realised.”

  Her smile was tragic. “I can hardly doubt my dead husband.”

  “Time to go,” he said abruptly.

  “Go where?”

  “For you, anywhere but here. Capone owes me that, but I suspect I might have trouble trying to collect. So we’ll just take this one stage at a time.”

  He walked over to the conference suite’s door, Clarissa following timidly behind him. The two gangsters lounging by the door straightened up as he approached; Silvano had disappeared, and they didn’t know what they were supposed to do.

  “I’m leaving now,” Kingsley said in a smoothly reasonable tone. “Be sensible. Move aside.”

  “Silvano won’t like this,” one said.

  “Then he should tell me in person. It’s not your job.” He concentrated on the door, visualising it swinging open.

  They tried to prevent it, focusing their own power on keeping it shut. A black magic version of arm wrestling.

  Kingsley laughed as the door crashed open. He looked from one gangster to the other, eyebrow arched in mocking challenge. Unopposed, he stepped through, and took Clarissa’s hand.

  Behind him, one of the gangsters picked up an ivory telephone and dialled furiously.

  Gerald walked cautiously along the corridor, pausing by each door to discover if anyone was inside. It took a lot of Loren’s attention just to make sure his legs moved in a regular motion. The state of his mind had horrified his wife; thoughts disjointed, personality retarded to a childlike confusion, memories becoming fainter and difficult to recall.

  Only his emotions remained at their adult strength, unmollified by reason and consideration. They pummelled what was left of his rationality with the sharp peaks of extreme states. He experienced fear, never mild anxiety; shame not embarrassment.

  She was constantly having to calm and soothe, offering the kind of persistent encouragement longed for by every child. Her presence was a comfort to him, he kept talking to her, a stream of consciousness drivel she found highly distracting.

  He was in bad physical shape, too. The crude injuries Kiera’s goons had inflicted were easy enough to heal with energistic power. But his body remained perpetually cold, and there was a nasty sharp ache behind his temples which even energistic power couldn’t banish entirely. What he needed was a week of proper sleep, a month of good meals, and a year on a psychiatrist’s couch. It would have to wait.